Welcome to this week’s Friday Quiz, where a reader shuffles his/her iPod then lists the first lines from the first 30 songs that come up. It’s up to us to provide the artist and title of each song. Huzzah!

Basic rules: Post your answers in the comments section, don’t use internet to look up lyrics, and please don’t supply more than three  answers per day.

(Last week I was so busy that I didn’t update the post with correct answers. I’ll try to stay on top of that this time.)

This week’s quiz comes from long-time Critical Condition reader Destiny, and I thank her for that!

And for last week’s quiz… go here.

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It’s been a great week for the blogs of my friends and neigbors.

On the lighter side, Sarah D. Bunting at Tomato Nation has been hosting the Crushed Film Festival, in which participants recall the worst movies they ever watched… just so they could see their Hollywood crush on screen. I wrote about my embarrassing love affair with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which was spurred by my boundless desire to see Jude Law shirtless. Other awesomely terrible movies on display include Kuffs and Boiler Room. Read them all!

On a more serious note, JNez@Thirty Daes was prompted by the accusation that Chris Brown assualted Rihanna to write an essay about his own history as both an abuser and an abuse victim. It’s a remarkable piece that gives thoughtful insight on the monstrous patterns of abuse. I read it a few days ago, and it has stayed with me.

Tim Haskell is the mastermind behind Nightmare, one of the country’s most lauded haunted houses, and he’s the guru of Haunternet, which is one the web’s bastions of horror information. So basically, there’s no one better to review the current reboot of Friday the 13th. After I scaled the trailer, I was more than happy to let Tim take us home with a full review.

And from what I’ve gathered, this review is far more entertaining than the film itself. Take it away, Tim!

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I mean, seriously: Is Britney Spears going to ask me to look after her kids? Because she’s getting awfully close to being all up in my grill.

Consider this: I know not one, not two, but three people who are going to be performing on her upcoming Circus tour. They’re all professional clowns, so it kind of makes sense that they’ll be performing in a circus-themed show, but here’s the thing: I know them from different places. Two of the clowns, Stephanie and Matt, are married, and I met them through my boyfriend here in New York. The third clown, Mike, is a friend of mine from Emory. Until now, Stephanie and Matt didn’t know Mike at all.

That means two unrelated parts of my life have connected me to a Britney experience. 

I mean, it’s weird, right? But also kind of awesome? 

If anyone else reading The Critical Condition has plans to perform with Britney Spears, please let me know.

Tom Hanks has slowed his output as an actor. He didn’t appear in anything in 2008, Charlie Wilson’s War was his only movie in 2007, and The Da Vinci Code was all he gave us in 2007. Otherwise, he’s been producing Big Love and about 1,000 specials on the Greatest Generation.

That’s for the best, since Hanks was seriously in the nation’s grill for about ten years. He was starting to come across as smug and overexposed, but now that he’s dialing it down, I can actually get enthusiastic when he turns up in a supporting role in a quirky ensemble film. A film like The Great Buck Howard.

After the jump, let’s peep the trailer and see if the rest of the movie looks as palatable as a return from Captain Castaway.

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Alright y’all, it’s time to put our viral powers to the test. The song “Broken Strings” (by James Morrison featuring Nelly Furtado) has been a gonzo-bozo hit in England, where it has bounced around the top ten since December. It peaked at number two, and it’s still hanging in the upper tier, which is really impressive in the mercurial U.K. market.

And guess what? We can buy the song right here in America! Yes! It’s been available at iTunes and in stores since September, when Morrison’s album Songs for You, Truths for Me was released. 

After the jump, I’ll post the track and explain why we should turn this little ditty into the jam of the spring.

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It’s time for Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives in this week’s episode of Big Love.

To find out the results, just go here on the Huffington Post.

The current seasons of Survivor and The Amazing Race have led me to a scientific discovery.

If you think of it as evolution, then Ricky Schroeder’s wife Andrea was one of the first fish to crawl out of the ocean. When she appeared last year on Season 2 of Bravo’s Top Design, she heralded a fascinating television trend: Famous people appearing on reality shows about… normal people.

That’s different than famous people freaking it up on The Surreal Life or winking at their status on Dancing With the Stars… you know, shows where a participant’s fame is the ostensible reason to watch. When Andrea Schroeder went on TV to compete as an interior designer, she was… just another designer. I mean, yes, she talked about Ol’ Silver Spoon several times, but the focus was generally on her fabric choices. She was a celebrity, de-celebritized.

MORE…

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I know this is old news for many people, but after a week away, I’m just catching up on a lot of TV.

Most distressing discovery so far? American Idol has apparently decided to send me to hell. How else to explain the presence of Tatiana del Toro in the Top 36? Has there ever been a more annoying contestant?

Hell, “annoying” isn’t even the word for it. The rocking, the crying, the weird laughter, the incessant demands for attention… she makes me shudder to my soul.

More on that—and a horrifying video—after the jump…

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NOTE: Thanks to the discussion of this post, I realized I needed to clarify my thinking, so the second half has been rewritten. Here’s to discussion!

I just got home from working on a (fantastic) theater project that included rape jokes, Second Life sex, and coy use of the phrase “scat bottom.” I’m not easy to shock.

But Lisa Lampanelli? Shocks me.

Last week, I caught her HBO stand-up comedy special, and I actually blushed at several of the “queen of mean’s” jokes. Because y’all… Don Rickles and Howard Stern might drop some off-color bombs, but I have never, ever encountered a comedian who is more gleefully and universally offensive than Lisa Lampanelli. I mean, things I wouldn’t dare to think come flying out of her mouth, and that’s given her a lot of success.

Her comedy isn’t especially funny (more on that later), but it’s compelling because it’s just as racist, homophobic, and sexist as any Don Imus radio broadcast. So far, however, Lampanelli’s gotten Grammy nominations instead of lawsuits. 

For many people, her humor obviously falls on this side of “objectionable.” But why?

I’ve figured out why I wasn’t offended by her HBO special Long Live the Queen, and I’d wager a lot of people share my reasons. I’ll lay them out… after the jump!

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